It produces the largest single flower in the world, up to about a metre across
Rafflesia arnoldii — the titan arum has the larger inflorescence, but that is a cluster, not one flower.
Nature · Ferns, grasses & other plants
Rafflesia arnoldii
Flower to about 1 m across · named 1820
Rafflesia arnoldii — Rafflesiaceae
Rafflesia arnoldii produces the largest single flower in the world, up to a metre across and weighing several kilograms, and smells of rotting meat to draw the carrion flies that pollinate it. The rest of the plant does not exist in any ordinary sense: it has no leaves, stems, roots or chlorophyll, and lives as a mass of thread-like tissue inside the stems of Tetrastigma vines. Only the flower ever emerges, from a bud like a cabbage that takes months to swell and opens for a few days.
How to spot them
- ▸Five thick, mottled red-brown petal-like lobes spotted with cream warts, around a deep central pit
- ▸Enormous — up to about a metre across — and sitting on the forest floor with no stem or leaves attached
- ▸A stench of rotten flesh, and clouds of carrion flies
- ▸Emerges from a swollen cabbage-like bud on a Tetrastigma vine stem
- ▸Rainforest of Sumatra and Borneo only
How to know it
A holoparasite with no leaves, stems, roots or chlorophyll, living as threads inside a Tetrastigma vine
Rafflesia arnoldii.
It smells of rotting flesh and is pollinated by carrion flies, so its bloom lasts only days
Rafflesia arnoldii — one of the two plants called the corpse flower.
Named in 1820 for the founder of Singapore and for the surgeon-naturalist who found it with him in Sumatra
Rafflesia arnoldii — Sir Stamford Raffles and Dr Joseph Arnold.
Sexes are on separate plants, so a male and a female bud must open close together and at the same time
Rafflesia arnoldii — one reason it sets seed so rarely.
It is the national flower of Indonesia in its 'rare flower' category, alongside the jasmine and the moon orchid
Rafflesia arnoldii — padma raksasa, the giant padma.
Quick-fire facts
- •The largest single flower of any plant: up to about 1 m across and several kilograms in weight
- •A holoparasite — it has no chlorophyll and cannot photosynthesise at all
- •Lives inside the stems of Tetrastigma vines, members of the grape family, as strands of tissue like a fungal mycelium
- •Found only in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo
- •Named for Sir Stamford Raffles, who led the 1818 Sumatra expedition, and Dr Joseph Arnold, who collected it; Robert Brown published the name in 1820
- •Dioecious: male and female flowers are on separate plants, so pollination is rare
- •The bud takes many months to develop and the open flower lasts only a few days before blackening
- •Often confused with the titan arum, also called a corpse flower; they are wholly unrelated, and the titan's is an inflorescence, not a single flower
- •Threatened by deforestation, and the whole genus Rafflesia is of serious conservation concern
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Rafflesia arnoldi